Trugg and Barrows Garden Diary November 2012

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree”

It has been a wonderful year for autumn colour. One of the first trees as always that showed it’s intent in the garden was the Cladrastis lutea (Yellow wood). This seemed to spur many of the plants in the garden to produce a fantastic display of reds, oranges, browns and yellows in every hue and shade imaginable. Standing beneath a mature Copper Beech, at the peak of its Autumn display, provided a moment of pure pleasure. The tree seemed to produce illumination from within its leaves, casting a soft ‘heavenly’ light around its base. Over the next two months we will spend much of our time picking these and millions of other leaves up, ah well, first the pleasure then the pain. As well as leaf collecting over the next month we will be cutting back herbaceous plants and mulching the borders. Any late planting before the ground gets frosted will also be undertaken.
You may have heard in the news recently about a fungus that is causing leaf loss and crown die back on ash trees in East Anglia. Chalara fraxinea is now the greatest threat facing trees in the UK since Dutch elm killed millions of trees in the countryside during the 1970s. The disease may have been lying dormant in our ash trees for many years, and it may already be widespread.
The first signs of the fungus arriving in Britain were in February when it was found in saplings at a nursery in Buckinghamshire, which had imported trees from Holland. It has subsequently been identified in several sites around the U.K.
Recently the fungus was found in 20-year-old trees in East Anglia. The fungal spores could have found their way from mainland Europe on cloths or boots or they could have blown over from infected trees on mainland Europe. This fungus adds to the problems already facing trees in this country such as the oak processionary moth, sudden oak death, horse-chestnut leaf miner and a fungus that has been devastating larches called Phytophthoria.
Until this year, ash trees in this country had apparently remained free of the fungus while it has been running rampant in parts of Europe. The disease first emerged in 1992 in Poland and other eastern European countries, possibly originating in Asia, where the indigenous ash trees have developed a natural immunity. Once some of these infected but resistant trees were imported in to Europe the fungus was then able to transfer to the non-resistant European stock.
It gradually spread across the continent, reaching Denmark in around 2003, where it has killed 90 per cent of the country’s ash trees, and Holland in 2010. The fungus responsible for the disease was identified in 2006.
Ash trees are the fourth most abundant tree species in the U.K. with an estimated 80 million specimens. It can be seen all over the landscape. In many hedgerows ash has replaced the elm after it was devistated in the 1970’s. There is currently a big effort to find infected trees in Britain in an attempt to identify sites where the disease has taken hold. As there is no known cure, infected trees have to be destroyed in order to try to contain the fungus. So far around 100,000 trees have been destroyed at 20 or so sites in the U.K.
In this modern age, the virtues of ash have been largely forgotten, but no tree has tougher, more elastic and flexible wood than the ash. In times past ash timber was the first choice for spears, arrows and pike-shafts. Larger timber was used for wagons or furniture; smaller poles were ideal for hop-poles, wagon wheels, ladders, oars and shafts for tools. Well seasoned ash has the ability to be steamed and bent into all kinds of shapes and still keep its strength; the chassis for the Morgan car is made from ash. As a fuel wood, ash is very useful as it will burn green.
Currently Chalara fraxinea is a quarantine pest under national emergency measures and as such suspected cases must be reported. You can do this by calling the Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate on 01904 465625. Click on the link to find a pictorial guide on how to identify the disease.

A Garden to Visit.

As winter winds blow in, it is nice to think of sitting in the warm whilst the garden makes few demands and tasks can be left for sunnier weather. Yet gardeners, being the outdoors type, will often find themselves getting bored kicking around the house especially on clear crisp days. For this reason I always look for gardens to visit in winter. High on my list is Colesbourne Park in Gloucestershire.
I had heard and read about this famous snowdrop garden and added it to my list of places to go if I was ever in the area. I recently went to a talk about this garden hosted by the Shropshire branch of ‘Plant Heritage’ which has now made it a must see for me.
Sitting in the Churn valley in the Cotswolds, Colesbourne has been home to the Elwes (think Galanthus elwesii) family for over 200 years though the original Victorian pile has been extensively modified and made into a comfortable family home.
The garden is open every weekend in February and such is its popularity that visitor numbers in this month alone pay for the garden for the rest of the year!
The collection of snowdrops now boasts over 250 varieties and for those of us, (myself included), who do not fancy kneeling in the mud to examine minute differences, they are planted in broad drifts which gives a wonderful effect.
The garden is just over ten acres surrounded by a shelter belt of mature beech woodland planted as a shelter belt. Glades are opened along pathways containing shrubs grown for winter interest. Yet it is bulbs for which Colesbourne is rightly famous. Henry John Elwes, discoverer of G. elwesii, was a keen plant hunter in the nineteenth century and brought many treasures back from his travels, mostly bulbous plants.
Winter aconites abound at Colesbourne spreading their cheery yellow flowers over a long period. They include some rare cultivars including ‘Lightening’ and the cheekily named seedling of this variety ‘Strikes Twice’.
Self-sowing is encouraged at Colesbourne such as the bank of G. plicatus ssp. byzantinus in the Icehouse Hollow and the Fritillaria meleagris ‘Alba’. Petasites japonica is also grown here but a word of warning to those tempted by the flower heads sitting flush to the ground – once you get this plant it is there forever and spreads wherever it wants!
Colesbourne is high on my list of must see places, perhaps you would like to write in and tell me yours? (See the email below).
In the Kitchen Garden.
Over the next month in the kitchen garden we will be:- pruning this years fruited stems out of the raspberries, winter pruning apple trees, more leaf collecting and generally tidying the vegetable plot. There are still some crops to harvest including leeks, sprouts and carrots. Due to the work schedule and mice I don’t plant any crops at this time of year, but you could have a go at sowing some early cabbage for planting out in spring.
Please note: images have been removed from this pages because some of them may have been used without permission.